Punch Games

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro delivers a speech during a ceremony to celebrate the 81st anniversary of the National Guard in Caracas on Saturday, August 4, 2018. AFP photo

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro defended his government’s legitimacy Sunday as his bid for a second six-year term has come under growing fire internationally and by the country’s opposition-controlled National Assembly.

In another sign of turmoil around Maduro, who is to be sworn in Thursday, the Venezuelan Supreme Court confirmed that a justice who sat on a panel that deals with electoral issues has fled the county.

News of the defection of Christian Zerpa came a day after the opposition-controlled National Assembly declared Maduro’s presidency to be illegitimate and called for a transitional government to organize democratic elections.

Responding on Twitter, Maduro declared: “Legitimacy has been given us by the people with their vote. To those who hope to break our will, make no mistake. Venezuela will be respected!”

Maduro was re-elected May 20 in presidential elections called by a regime-backed Constituent Assembly and boycotted by the opposition, many of whose best-known leaders were under house arrest or barred from running.

The United States, the European Union and a grouping of countries from the Western Hemisphere called the Lima Group have refused to recognize the election.

On Friday, Canada and 12 other Lima Group countries joined in calling for Maduro to step down and open the way for a transitional government formed by leaders of the National Assembly.

The US State Department issued a statement Saturday saying the United States stands with the National Assembly as “the only legitimate and last remaining democratically elected institution that truly represents the will of the Venezuelan people.”

On Sunday, the Venezuelan foreign ministry accused Washington of attempting “to consummate a coup d’etat … in promoting the repudiation of legitimate and democratic institutions.”

– Harassment allegations –
The Supreme Court, meanwhile, said it has opened an investigation into Zerpa, over allegations he sexually harassed women who worked in his office.

The Supreme Court said the investigation dates back to November 2018, but it was only made public after the reports that the justice had fled to Florida.

Venezuelan journalists based in the United States linked the defection to Maduro’s controversial attempt to remain in office for another six years.

Journalist Carla Angola, who said she interviewed Zerpa, reported he was in Florida and was prepared to cooperate with US prosecutors investigating Venezuelan corruption and human rights violations.

Supreme Court president Maikel Moreno charged that Zerpa was the subject of numerous allegations of “indecorous and immoral conduct to the detriment of a group of women.”

The Supreme Court statement said he was being investigated for “sexual harassment, lascivious acts and psychological violence” against women in his office.

Moreno denied that the case exposes divisions within the court, which has acted consistently in line with the government.

“Far from separating us, it unites us,” he said.

Zerpa was a member of the ruling United Socialist Party (PSUV) and was appointed to the high court in 2015 just days before the opposition assumed the majority in the National Assembly.

He was among a group of Venezuelan officials hit with financial sanctions by Canada, as it moved to put pressure on the Maduro government.

Punch Games

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has confessed to sexually abusing a maid while he was a teenager, according to a report.

In a speech on December 29, Duterte said that he had confessed to a priest going into a maid’s room while she slept and placing his fingers on her genitals, TIME magazine reports, quoting the BBC.

The remarks were not unusual for Duterte, who has frequently come under fire for making statements that demean or encourage violence against women.

Last June and July, women’s rights activists gathered in Manila to protest Duterte’s treatment of women, including his remarks that communist rebels should be “shot in the vagina.”

The new remarks stand out, however, because Duterte admitted to sexually assaulting a woman himself.

Duterte said that when he was a teenager, he walked into the maid’s room while she was asleep.

“I lifted the blanket… I tried to touch what was inside the panty,” he said, according to the BBC. “I was touching. She woke up so I left the room.”

He later came back into the maid’s room and fondled her genitals again, the BBC said.
Duterte said that after hearing the confession, the priest said, “Say five Our Fathers, five Hail Marys, because you will go to hell.”

Duterte, a frequent critic of the Catholic Church, then turned the conversation to accusations about sexual abuse by Catholic priests, according to Rappler.

Gabriela Women’s Party, a political party that represents women’s rights groups, said that Duterte is “unworthy of his position and should resign,” according to the BBC.

Punch Games

Neighbouring countries are jittery about DR Congo's political future -- the mineral-rich country has a history of coups and conflicts which drag in other nations (AFP Photo/Junior D. KANNAH)

A police officer and civilian were killed in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in a dispute over alleged voting fraud in Sunday’s presidential and legislative elections, a witness and a politician from the area said.

Vital Kamerhe, a politician from South Kivu province, and a witness, who wished to remain anonymous, said an altercation broke out at a polling place in the town of Walungu after voters accused an election official of fraud.

A police officer shot and killed a young man involved in the melee and the crowd then beat the officer to death, they said.

Punch Games

After two years of delays, crackdowns and political turmoil, the Democratic Republic of Congo voted Sunday in presidential elections that will determine the future of Africa’s notoriously unstable giant.

Facing fears of bloodshed and a test of integrity, polling day appeared to be free from violence but frustration over problems and controversial voting machines ran deep.

The vote gives the DRC the chance of its first peaceful transfer of power since it gained independence from Belgium in 1960.

Analysts, though, say the threat of upheaval is great, given organisational hitches and suspicion of President Joseph Kabila, who refused to quit in 2016 after his two-term limit expired.

The election’s credibility has been strained by repeated delays, fears of chaos on polling day and accusations that electronic voting machines would help to rig the result.

On election eve, talks aimed at averting violence after the vote broke down.

Opposition frontrunners Martin Fayulu and Felix Tshisekedi refused to sign a proposed code of conduct with Kabila’s preferred successor, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary. They accused officials with the Independent National Election Commission (CENI) of thwarting changes to the text.

The UN, US and Europe have appealed for the elections to be free, fair and peaceful — a call echoed by the presidents of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and the neighbouring Republic of Congo.

And in the Vatican, Pope Francis led thousands of worshippers in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday in prayers for “normal and peaceful” elections.

– Opposition chance? –
Candidates posed for the cameras as they went to cast their ballot.

“You saw how I campaigned, everything that happened. I’ll be elected, I’ll be president from tonight.” Shadary told Actualite.cd news site, adding: “People must vote. We have to avoid violence.”

Meanwhile Tshisekedi predicted: “Victory is ours.”

Many voters said they were exhilarated at taking part in the first elections after the nearly 18-year Kabila era.

“I feel liberated, freed,” said Victor Balibwa, a 53-year-old civil servant, casting his ballot in Lubumbashi, the country’s mining capital in the southeast.

But there was also much evidence of organisational problems, including with the contested voting machines.

In some places, long queues built up because of a lack of electoral roll, technical problems or because voters could not find their names on the lists, AFP reporters found.

At Imara in Lubumbashi, 30-year-old voter Diane Mumba, said, “The machines have been breaking down again and again for the last two hours. I don’t know when I am going to vote.”

An election observer in Lubumbashi confirmed, “there are five or six polling stations where the machines aren’t working. You have to wait for a technician”.

In Kinshasa, an elderly lady said she had trouble with the touch-screen voting.

“It’s very complicated. I pressed the button without really knowing who I voted for — I didn’t see my candidate’s number or face,” she complained.

In the eastern city of Goma, voters who began queueing before the cut-off of 5pm were allowed to stay on to cast ballots. In the Kinshasa district of St. Raphael, where a delay in voting sparked anger earlier, ballotting was being allowed until 10pm, an African Union observer told AFP.

Twenty-one candidates are running in the presidential election, taking place alongside legislative and municipal polls.

The frontrunners include Kabila’s champion Shadary, a hardline former interior minister facing EU sanctions for a crackdown on protesters.

His biggest rivals are Fayulu, until recently a little-known legislator and former oil executive, and Tshisekedi, head of a veteran opposition party, the UDPS.

If the elections are “free and fair,” an opposition candidate will almost certainly win, said Jason Stearns of the Congo Research Group, based at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University.

Opinion polls make Fayulu clear favourite, garnering around 44 percent of voting intentions, followed by 24 percent for Tshisekedi and 18 percent for Shadary, he said.

However, “the potential for violence is extremely high,” he warned. Roughly half of respondents said they would reject the result if Shadary was declared winner, and would distrust DRC courts to settle a dispute fairly.

– Frail giant –
Almost the size of continental western Europe, the DRC is rich in gold, uranium, copper, cobalt and other minerals, but little wealth trickles down to the poor.

In the last 22 years, it has twice been a battleground for wars drawing in armies from central and southern Africa.

That legacy endures in the jungles of eastern DRC, where militias have carried out hundreds of killings.

Insecurity and an ongoing Ebola epidemic in part of North Kivu province, and communal violence in Yumbi, in the southwest, prompted the authorities to postpone the elections there until March.

Around 1.25 million people in a national electoral roll of around 40 million voters are affected.

Despite this, the elections in the rest of the country have gone ahead.

The provisional results will be announced on January 6, final results on January 15 and the new president sworn in on January 18.

Punch Games

French judges have dropped their long-running investigation into the deadly 1994 attack on former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, which sparked the country’s genocide, a legal source told AFP on Wednesday.

The probe has been a major source of tension between the two countries after seven people close to current Rwandan President Paul Kagame were charged in the French investigation.

Philippe Meilhac, lawyer for Habyarimana’s widow Agathe, told AFP that plaintiffs in the case would appeal the decision to scrap the investigation.

French prosecutors had requested the probe be dismissed in October due to insufficient evidence against the seven suspects.

At the time, lawyers for Habyarimana’s widow called the prosecutors’ move “unacceptable” and “largely politically motivated”.

Habyarimana, an ethnic Hutu, was killed in a missile strike on his plane near Kigali’s airport in April 1994.

His assassination triggered 100 days of bloodshed that left an estimated 800,000 people dead, mostly members of the Tutsi minority.

Kigali has long accused France of complicity in the genocide by supporting the Hutu regime, training the soldiers and militiamen who carried out the killings.

The French probe into Habyarimana’s execution was opened in 1998 on the request of relatives of French crew members killed in the attack on the plane.

The first judge to lead the probe, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, backed the theory that it was Tutsi militants from the former rebellion led by Kagame, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR), who shot down the plane.

The French probe was closed but eventually reopened in 2016 before hitting a series of legal obstacles over the past two years.

A Rwandan commission had in 2009 found Hutu extremists responsible for the assassination of Habyarimana.

Punch Games

Democratic Republic of the Congo on Wednesday announced that key elections due to take place nationwide on December 30 would be postponed to March in two regions troubled by violence.

However, the delay will not affect the nationwide timetable for the presidential ballot, which is being held alongside legislative and provincial elections, the national election commission CENI said.

The polls, already postponed three times, are due to bring the curtain down on the era of President Joseph Kabila, in charge of the mineral-rich country for nearly 18 turbulent years.

“The elections in the Beni region and the cities of Beni and Butembo in North Kivu province as well as Yumbi in the (southwest) Mai-Ndombe province initially scheduled for December 30 will now be held in March,” CENI said.

The triple elections were due to have been held last Sunday after a long period of political uncertainty.

But national election supervisors ordered a week-long postponement, blaming a warehouse fire that destroyed voting machines and ballot papers earmarked for Kinshasa.

Opposition candidates are concerned over the use of the electronic voting machines, which they fear will allow massive fraud. Electoral authorities say the machines will make the ballot more efficient.

The final results of the presidential vote will be published on January 15, and the next president will be sworn in on January 18, CENI said, without explaining how this would dovetail with the delayed vote in the troubled regions.

The Democratic Republic of Congo, the second biggest country in Africa, has a long history of political turbulence and violence.

It has never had a peaceful transition of power since it gained independence from Belgium in 1960.

In 1996-1997 and from 1998-2003, it became the theatre of two wars that left millions of dead and homeless and sucked in countries from around central and southern Africa.

Wars are unfolding in the east, where militia groups are carrying out bloody attacks.

The CENI statement pointed in particular to North Kivu, in the grip of “a terrorist threat” and “a dangerous, ongoing epidemic of Ebola virus” in the areas of Beni and Butembo.

At the other end of the country, in Yumbi territory, violence this month had caused an exodus and led to the destruction of election equipment, it said.

Punch Games

Former Madagascan president Andry Rajoelina was set to return to power as partial election results on Saturday gave him a clear lead over his predecessor Marc Ravalomanana, who has alleged the vote count was fraudulent.

With 3.5 million ballots counted out of about five million cast, Rajoelina had won 55.7 percent against 44.2 percent for Ravalomanana in Wednesday’s run-off election, according to the electoral commission.

Complete results are expected next week, before a period in which they can be legally challenged via the courts.

The two-round election was beset by allegations of fraud from both sides and the result may be contested — raising the risk of political instability in the Indian Ocean island which has a history of coups and unrest.

“We are still waiting for the full results but I believe that the current results are irreversible. Victory is ours!” Hajo Andrianainarivelo, a senior member of Rajoelina’s team, told AFP.

Fanirisoa Erinaivo, a first-round losing candidate who joined Ravalomanana’s team, demanded transparency over how the vote was being counted.

“According to the return sheets that have reached us, it is Marc Ravalomanana who is in the lead,” she told AFP.

“The election commission only releases the sheets where Rajoelina is in the lead — we suspect manipulation.”

Ravalomanana was due to issue a statement on Sunday, his campaign team said.

EU election observers have said they had not seen evidence of malpractice.

“The Madagascans voted in a peaceful atmosphere in a transparent and well-organised poll,” mission head Cristian Preda told reporters.

“Even before the first round, the candidates talked about massive fraud. We did not see it in the field… I hope that calm will come once the results are very clear.”

In the same vein, the African Union (AU) congratulated the “two candidates, the entire political class and the Madagascan people who, despite the differences… have shown restraint.”

Bitter rivals
Rajoelina and Ravalomanana, both former presidents and long-time rivals, have been locked in a fiercely personal duel for power, coming first and second in the preliminary election in November.

Ravalomanana told AFP on Thursday at his campaign headquarters in the capital Antananarivo that he suspected “massive fraud”.

Sensing victory, Rajoelina’s campaign staff have nonetheless responded with their own accusations, saying they had detected “fraud” and “manipulation”.

The two candidates were both banned from running in the 2013 election as part of an agreement to end recurring crises that have rocked Madagascar since independence from France in 1960.

Ravalomanana, 69, was first elected president in 2002 but was forced to resign seven years later by violent demonstrations supported by Rajoelina, the then mayor of the capital Antananarivo.

Rajoelina, now 44, was installed by the army and ruled until 2014. He is a former events planner and successful entrepreneur with slick communication skills.

Ravalomanana is a former milkman from a peasant family who went on to build a business empire.

Both candidates have spent lavishly on campaigning, with promises and handouts distributed liberally to voters, who are among the poorest in Africa.

In the first round, Rajoelina won 39 percent compared with 35 percent for Ravalomanana.

Madagascar is well known for its vanilla and precious redwood, yet is one of the world’s poorest nations, according to World Bank data, with 76 percent of people living in extreme poverty.

The island, which is also famed for its unique wildlife, is dependent on foreign aid and burdened by political instability.

Punch Games

An Australian Government Minister, Andrew Broad, who resigned from his role over allegations of improper behaviour with a younger woman, on Tuesday said he would quit politics in 2019.

Broad resigned from his role as assistant minister to Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack on Monday after a tabloid magazine claimed the lawmaker, who is married, used a dating website to meet younger girls during government travel.

“After recent media stories about my private life, it is clear that the people of Mallee will be best served in the next parliament by a different Nationals candidate,” Broad, a lawmaker with the centre-right Nationals party, said in a statement on Tuesday.

Broad will continue as a parliamentarian until the next general election, which is due to be held by May.

Broad said he had let down his family, staff, party and voters and the community.

The article in the magazine, New Idea, quoted a woman claiming she had dinner with Broad at a Hong Kong restaurant in November after connecting through a dating website.

The woman, allegedly 20 years younger than the 43-year-old lawmaker, claimed that he boasted about his role as assistant minister, acted inappropriately and described himself as “James Bond” numerous times.